Today Public First launches ‘What Parents Value in Education’, the first report in a three-part series from the Parent Voice Project – a new initiative exploring parents’ experiences of the education system in England. 

Founded by Fiona Forbes, the project aims to address a long-standing gap in national education debates: while teachers, unions and policymakers are regularly consulted, parents – who see the system up close every day – are rarely heard at scale. The Parent Voice Project seeks to fill that gap by providing balanced, robust insight that is constructive for schools and useful for policymakers. 

This first report draws on a nationally representative survey of more than 6,000 parents of school-aged children, alongside in-depth focus groups to understand the reasons behind their views. Taken together, the findings show that parents are overwhelmingly supportive of schools and teachers, while acutely aware of the pressures the system is under. 

One area where this is particularly visible is school funding. 41% of parents report being asked to contribute to day-to-day running costs, and 19% say this has happened on multiple occasions.  Parents described mixed feelings about this – recognising the financial pressures schools face, but concerned about what it signals for the system: 

“It all goes back to the Government’s got no money, or the country’s got no money…so the school’s not got any funding” – Mother from Oldham, Social Grade C. with children aged 2 and 13  

“Schools don’t have enough money and if they want to do anything nice, they have to ask the parents to fund it”  – Father from Swindon in Social Grade C with children aged 5 and 12  

Other findings include:  

• Most parents believe their child receives a high-quality education, and very few think it’s poor – though confidence does fall as children get older.  

• After funding, parents’ biggest concerns are behaviour, mobile phones and children’s mental health.  

• There is no consensus amongst parents on the number or stressfulness of exams; key dependencies are their child’s age, gender and whether they have SEND.  

• When choosing a school, location matters most; Ofsted ratings rank lower. 

This report is the first in a series that will run across the 2025-26 academic year. Future reports will explore how well schools work for every child, and how parents engage with schools. Recommendations will be provided at the end of the project. 

Read the full report here. 

Polling tables are available here.